UPDATE -- athenahealth’s More Disruption Please Program Launches ‘Innovation Challenge’ to Tackle Pain Points of Hospital Care

WATERTOWN, Mass., Jan. 05, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based services and mobile applications for medical groups and health systems, today announced two More Disruption Please (MDP) initiatives:  

• The MDP ‘Innovation Challenge,’ a virtual hackathon dedicated to developing solutions for the hospital space. The challenge will take place online starting January 5th at mdpchallenge.devpost.com with final submissions due April 1st
• A pitch event and fireside chat during JP Morgan’s Healthcare Conference, co-hosted with StartUp Health and featuring Bill Draper, one of the west coast’s first venture capitalists and author of The Startup Game

Call for Entrepreneurs: The MDP Innovation Challenge Today, MDP invites entrepreneurs, developers, health care professionals, and innovators from across the country to step up to the challenge of building cloud-based solutions that solve hospitals’ biggest pain points.

“Hospitals, from the smallest critical access facilities to leading academic medical centers, are starved for disruptive, nimble technologies that can improve care quality, maximize provider efficiency, and reduce costs,” said Jonathan Bush, CEO of athenahealth. “For this challenge, we welcome anyone with a novel approach to fixing what’s broken—big or small, radical or simple. The future of health care depends on entrepreneurs overcoming the industry’s notoriously high barriers to entry. That’s why we built the More Disruption Please program—to inspire a new generation of apps and services that will challenge and revolutionize the way providers and hospitals work.”  

The challenge, hosted at mdpchallenge.devpost.com, will kick off on January 5, 2016 and remain open through April 1, 2016. A panel of industry experts will evaluate submissions, with winners announced online on April 12th.1 The individual or team behind the best innovation will receive $10,000 in cash, a round-trip flight to Boston to meet with athenahealth executives, and the potential for partnership and/or investment via the MDP program.  Cash prizes will also be awarded to the runner-up, honorable mentions, and a crowd-sourced People’s Choice finalist.  To learn more about the most pressing pain points facing hospitals today, read Jonathan Bush’s blog here.

MDP + StartUp Health to Co-Host JP Morgan EventsIn addition to the Innovation Challenge, on January 12, MDP will team up with StartUp Health to host a Startup Showcase during JP Morgan’s 34th Annual Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. The event will feature 1-minute pitches from a pre-selected group of MDP and StartUp Health companies in front of an audience of over 200 health care investors. The showcase will be followed by a fireside chat with Bill Draper and Jonathan Bush on the topic of Draper’s book, The Startup Game.

To learn more about athenahealth’s MDP program and partnership opportunities, please visit www.athenahealth.com/disruption.

About ‘More Disruption Please’Health care needs less distraction and more disruption. Through collaboration and seamless integration on an open cloud platform, More Disruption Please is accelerating high-value innovation, offering new services to help providers thrive in the face of industry change and pressure. 

The MDP Network brings together a community of great minds looking to improve the status quo in health care. The MDP Accelerator invests in high-potential, early stage start-ups and provides resources and customer access critical to their scalability and success. The athenahealth Marketplace delivers solutions seamlessly integrated into athenaNet that enable providers to optimize care.

About athenahealth, Inc.athenahealth is a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health records (EHR), revenue cycle management and  medical billing, patient engagement, care coordination, and population health management, as well as Epocrates and other point-of-care mobile apps. We connect care and drive meaningful, measurable results for more than 73,000 healthcare providers in medical practices and health systems nationwide. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com.

1 Prizes and contest are subject to rules that will be posted on mdpchallenge.devpost.com

 

Contact Info:
Holly Spring
athenahealth, Inc. (Media)
[email protected]
617-402-1631

Dana Quattrochi
athenahealth, Inc. (Investors)
[email protected]
617-402-1329

Source: athenahealth, Inc.

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